'Facebook for Animals' Tested On Wild Great Tits

[2on2u]

This should be fun.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120618150519.htm
ScienceDaily (June 18, 2012) — A new way of analyzing the social networks that link individual animals to each other has been tested on wild great tits by Oxford University researchers.


A new way of analyzing the social networks that link individual animals to each other has been tested on wild great tits. (Credit: © Javier Castro / Fotolia)

How animals associate in groups can have important consequences in terms of the health and survival of both individuals and whole populations; influencing factors such as the spread of disease and the ability to find food or mates.

But revealing the networks underlying animal societies is a challenge when a large amount of fieldwork data consists of a long stream of automated observations of the times and locations of individuals, leaving scientists to try and reconstruct the 'big picture' of how individuals are connected.

[Cooley Hurd]

1. Alerted!

Why, I'm getting the vapors just thinking about all those networked tits! :-D

[HopeHoops]

3. (.) (.) - They're just birds.

[Scootaloo]

2. I've always wondereed why we call them that...

I mean, they don't have feathers or anything. Oh. Wait. What were we talking about?

Oh right. So... Long story short, animals form social networks? Only news for me that apparently great tits are one more animal that does this; it's pretty well-documented among other critters as well.